20s AU Post

[cryptsleeper]

"Land of the Dead" (Watch on YouTube)

Current Carmilla plot outline
--Post-fire, Carmilla and Mr. Peanut team up mostly to use each other. Carmilla's spent the past several months (since November, it is now February 1925) networking, and it's clear to her that Alucard's not suited for the position and that the other two are the obvious weakness. Mr Peanut needs something back, so this is perfect on her end. Mr Peanut can only imagine the joys of vampire blood in his work, and he'd like an army of vampires for his own ends.
--Shit stirring from Mr Peanut (all of March?)
--Mr Peanut also begins to sell mis Miracle Serum, which has vampire blood in it.
--Gang is very much trying to murder Mr Peanut during this.
--Start of April, vampire gets a call from one of the blood bank contacts that 3 patients have come in and are displaying some bizarre signs. Investigation yields the fact that they're in process of turning, and they've all taken the same serum.
--Additional investigation reveals O FUCK IT MR PEANUT
--Meanwhile Carmilla's been made aware of a familiar she didn't sire, so she knows something's up. Big fight with Mr. Peanut and thus Mr. Peanut is left depowered
--Gang commits a murder
--Carmilla's well sured up on her contacts now, and it's time for open rebellion (mid-April)
--In a more subtle attempt to let Alucard just step aside, she cuts the breaks on demon car and shows up to gloat/suggest he not pull a dad and go to deal with his grief quietly while she runs the city. The how he wants to do it is up to him (black widow joke goes here.) Treffy and Sypha walk in.
--1 week of straight up rebellion; feedings, no help from allies, need to do damage control instead of fight carmilla, every dracula rule is
--MEANWHILE IN GRAVITY FALLS, triangle shows Vlad what's up to try and psyche him out, somehow this finalyl snaps Vlad out of his depression and he heads home
--Just in time for Alucard and Carmilla to be tearing each other to bits in one of the bayous, it's not going well
--Vlad coming in means the king of vampires is accosted by a belmont with a pair of blessed knitting needles and a speaker with a fucking gun and he's just like what the shit happened to the world while i was gone
--Wards around the fight means that only demon car can break the wards, everyone has to pile in.
--Carmilla gets her ass kicked AND SENT TO THE JUSTICE DIMENSION

THEN THERE WERE FAERIES.
--Prior to all of this the vampire and Sypha have done a shit ton of research on how to get their Belmont back
--Sypha has also been practicing debating with dad, which leaves everyone Very Tired.
--When Trevor is actually snatched up (1 year after marriage, it takes fae effort. Taking Arn's shape fails, so it's a lot more kidnapping by force), Sypha and Alucard go into Faerie
--But they're playing this as politics, not as heroes rescuing their damsel, so that means the faeries are just "wait what now excuse u?"
--There are 3 gates and 3 trials (the particulars we're still bullshitting.) Each is asked to sacrifice 3 things. (Alucard: voice, his titles as bestowed upon by his father and his people, i forget the third; Sypha: her human form (she's a birb), fuck what were the other two)
--They enter the court at the end of the third trial. After LITERALLY ALL THE TITLES Sypha declares she Speaks for Trevor Belmont
--Claim debate over Trevor, turns out that the rules are in Sypha's favor.
--But that means debating to leave Fae without giving up what they've chosen.
--Sypha lawyers it all out, Alucard is a safety deposit and hangs out with Fae!Trevor
--In the end, safe passage out of Faerie consists of Sypha giving up her memory of the necromancer (billed as a great mage she studied under), the vampire gives up his immortality, and Trevor is replaced with Carmilla (dad was aware of this option and OK with it), but Trevor has his ability to swear taken. He now soundslike a rubber ducky when he tries
--Everyone gets home okay, except for the AU of this AU where the gang fails, but Trevor's on their doorstep like a bat out of Hell because time doesn't work right and he's been in Hell for a WHILE.

Comments

[miraclewhip]

Well shit, I'll barely see any of you at all.

[ He sleeps and wakes earliest of the three, sober and left to his own devices. He'll be waking up just as Alucard comes to bed. They'll have a few hours in the evening shared, if that. It wasn't really a problem before, he'd just put anything that needed Alucard's attention to one side to have him look over at 'breakfast'. It's not a problem now. Just kind of a sobering thought. ]

Should I try to match you, or will you set aside time for me in the evening? Office time, I mean.

[ Social time doesn't seem like it's going to be an option for a while. ]

[cryptsleeper]

I am already on that path thanks to you.

[The lemonade does get delivered though, and then Alucard departs. In all of his considerations as he went about the work of finding Sypha again, he decided that for now, it would be better to stay in the townhouse his father held in the city itself rather then the castle. There were fewer memories there. Fewer ghosts. His father was less likely to return there and react to Alucard's presence.

So that is where he returns to so that he can continue to rest.

Within the blue fabric put into the bag, there is a note tucked into the folds. The handwriting is all too neat. Precise. Perfect.]

Miss Belnades,

Should you wish to check your handiwork before you and your people depart, you may find me at this address within the city. It is a townhouse that my family has used before.

[The address follows, and there are several fine bone needles that pin the note to the fabric.]

[cryptsleeper]

I know.

[Vampire schedules suck. Alucard huffs about that fact as he locks the front gate behind them both, then lnclines his head northward. Car's that way, and that way is where they have to start walking to.]

You're the priority when I wake up.

[But that means work priority. Not everything else. That world doesn't get to exist for the week. Two, if Alucard's being honest with himself, he'll end up sleeping in his own office for a week after this.]

[miraclewhip]

[ There's a phrase, isn't there, about being careful what you wish for. This whole time he's wanted Alucard to put everything into this and- now he kind of doesn't.

It'll be fine. Sypha's better at this than he is, and a lot worse at respecting where work ends and the rest begins. She'll hand over the results of her own work with a kiss and take his hands when they clench hard enough to send claws into his palms and talk about business and how much she loves him in the same breath. He can't do that, but she can. ]

Going to offend a lot of people, putting me before vampires.

[ Not really, honestly. It's winter, but late afternoon is still at least a little light. It's the best time for them to work on this, because nobody else will want that time. Except Sypha maybe.

He heads toward the car. It's been quite enough of the execution hall for now. ]

[cryptsleeper]

[In the end, it's a public affair. The murdered Dorian's sire wants it public, so that's what has to be done. It's the only demand she makes of the whole matter anyway, which leaves Alucard in no position to negotiate and every position to hate this even more. All the careful planning of who's to witness, pointless. He doesn't even need help apprehending the guilty Dorian and throwing him into that house of horrors. Dorian's own sire turns him in because how this all came to be in the first place is a total embarrassment.

The moment is awful. Alucard outlines the charges. Then there's nothing else but channeling every horrible emotion he has felt from the past week and turning it on the offending vampire. Red hot rage, terribly sharp claws, all in service of not true justice, but in making it known that Alucard is furious about what he has been forced to do. It is this vampire's fault, his and his alone that has placed Alucard in this situation.

It's a lie, of course, but it is a useful one. It allows Alucard to tear skin, to break ribs, to remove the organ in one horrible movement that the sound of the heart being torn so violently from the chest actually gets a few horrified faces.

Dorian was young. He does not turn to dust. He is instead a rotting pile of flesh. That's worse, and Alucard snaps for someone else to take care of the problem while the heart is given to other Dorian's sire. She already has a jar for it.

Alucard departs after that. Changes his clothes so that there is no blood upon them, stuffs the bloodied ones into a bag so they can be burned.

He returns home at dawn. Not the day of, but the day after. There's only ice coldness on his face, and he goes for the office. Flops onto the sofa he has in there, because he isn't taking any of this to their bed.]

[miraclewhip]

[ They've been tracking him - he asked for permission to do that, at least, with a promise that neither of them would pry further. Watching their precious little pile of sand drive to the French Quarter, and watching it not return home.

Sypha kept vigil over the map throughout the night, so she's dead to the world right now. He's just waking when there's the sound of the door. And then of the office door. And then of a vampire plummeting into a sofa.

Shit, he has to put on a shirt to go into the office.

It's about five minutes later when he makes his way in there, looking about the minimum amount of presentable that he's willing to be while in here (which is to say that all of the general clothing groups are accounted for and that his teeth have been brushed, but that he's wearing yesterday's crumpled clothes and his hair is Actually Everywhere and he's clinging to his mug of coffee for dear life). ]

Fuck, what have I told you about sleeping in here? [ He's too sleepy for consistent english, slipping in and out of french every few words. ] You have so many spare rooms. Use one of those. Th'office is for working.

[ Which is to say welcome home. ]

[cryptsleeper]

Mmph.

[He's sleeping in here and you can't stop him, Belmont. Alucard's already halfway there, face half mushed into one of the pillows, the rest of it pressed against the sofa itself. Never mind the lack of anything else. (He's taken his shoes off, at least.)

There's another mutter, this one almost impossible to make sense of. Alucard's not about to try and explain himself either.]

[miraclewhip]

I'm going to carry you out of here if I have to. But it's too fucking early to do that one-handed and I'm not putting down the coffee.

[ He knows what he's about. ]

So I'm just going to stare at you while I drink it. And it's going to be weird as fuck.

[cryptsleeper]

Don't touch me.

[Which is about as authoritative as Alucard's got it in him to be right now. Then it's right back to trying to sleep.]

[willpowerful]

[Blue fabric, and supplies, and food. The latter are for her people, she knows, but the fabric must be solely for her; he'd wanted to replace her robes, she remembers, and they'd had blood and dirt on them, so she hadn't taken them back. Payment in kind, except that this fabric is thicker and softer than what hers used to be — more expensive, more luxurious. Never something she would splurge on for herself; she would never be able to justify it.

But this is hers, now. It's hers, and she lifts it out of its bag to rub her cheek against it, and that's when she spots the note attached to the fabric.

A townhouse.

Well, she'll have to get going if she's going to make the walk all the way back to camp and to the townhouse again before the afternoon is through. And it's not like she needs to hustle anymore, anyway, with these bags of supplies already at her disposal.

So she returns to the camp, hiding the food and supplies back amongst their proper places and dropping the majority of the money with the collectors of it, but she keeps the fabric for herself as she returns back into town, wandering until she finds the townhouse address.

Once there, she stops outside the gates, not yet entering the property outright, but getting the lay of the land from her vantage point near the street.]

[cryptsleeper]

[The house is...ordinary. The end unit, so there's more windows to it, but otherwise ordinary. Built some time at the tail end of the Victorian era, the detail is enough to prove it. There are three stories, but no real room for a garden. Just a few patches of grass and a dead hydrangea bush that will see new life come spring.

There are lights on though, Alucard's made it back. All he's doing at the moment is dozing on the sofa, the bulk of the day's actions having exhausted his reserves. Maybe he'll sleep for another full day, see if that helps speed things along.]

[willpowerful]

[Ah, good. Someone's home. That's a good enough sign that she double-checks the address on her note and heads up to the door, looking around for a bell to ring before pressing it to herald her arrival.]

[miraclewhip]

Very well.

[ Well shit. That would be an instruction. True to his word, he just stares at Alucard as he drains the coffee cup. Then he puts it down.

And moves the table out of the way.

And crouches.

And lifts the sofa. ]

[cryptsleeper]

[The doorbell, is, not omnious chimes. It's a rather cheerful noise, something Alucard's mother insisted on because she needed an actual address and she couldn't scare people off with an entire organ bellowing someone's arrival.

Alucard sits up slowly at the bell. He has to, up and down are the quickest way to see Sypha's work come undone. Once he's steady though, he goes to the door. No point in fussing about who it may be. Only one new person has this address, and that's why when Alucard opens the door, Sypha is given the greeting of:]

I didn't expect you so soon.

[cryptsleeper]

[Alucard's too tired to think about exact words.

Until he's bolted upright because TREVOR. IS MOVING. THE ENTIRE FUCKING SOFA.

There is a loud yelp, and Alucard bolts upright.]

Belmont, what are you doing!?!

[miraclewhip]

[ There's a grunt of exertion before he speaks - fuck, it really is too early for this shit. ]

Not touching you.

[ Obviously.

He's moving the sofa toward the door. The chances of him managing to get it through there the way he's carrying it are slim, but he's going to try anyway. ]

[cryptsleeper]

Why the fuck are you...[Exact. Words. Goddamnit.

Alucard's swearing, Trevor's going to break his back at this rate, it's a bad morning.]

Please put the sofa down before you hurt yourself.

[miraclewhip]

Mmph.

[ Carrying a sofa around isn't a good situation to be having a conversation in, even if that conversation is just him being a shit. He moves back, putting sofa and Alucard back where he found them. ]

You can sleep anywhere else in the fucking castle. Just not here.

[cryptsleeper]

[There's a sigh of relief as the sofa touches ground. But it doesn't get Alucard to move. Or to face Trevor. Or generally act like he's okay.]

It's one sleep.

[At least he doesn't qualify with it's fine or any variant.]

[willpowerful]

You said "before my people depart". It is before they depart; you just did not specify how long before.

[Naturally, the instant he lets her in, she'll be looking around in awestruck delight, taking in all the sights and furnishings of the townhouse.]

Besides, I wanted to see your home. Or one of them, at least: I assume you have more than one.

[miraclewhip]

No.

[ He picks his coffee mug back up, because no leaving dirty dishes in here is just as important as no sleeping in here. ]

You managed everything else, don't fuck up this one last thing.

[cryptsleeper]

In fairness, I am ignorant of how long Speakers stay in a given place.

[He's...surprised at the quickness, but glad for it as well. Alucard closes the door behind them both, and lingers there as Sypha heads down the small hallway. The stairs are before her, living room to the right, kitchen in back. The space is compact, but it's much cozier for it.

Home decorating for this one had been his mother's domain. The only nods to greater wealth and his father's age are the pieces of art that hang on the walls. Impressionist sketches, and Alucard's still not sure how his father obtained them.]

You assume correctly. This one's...easier, right now.

[cryptsleeper]

Managing everything else is the only reason I want to be in here to begin with.

[The dirty dish thing is more so Alucard doesn't spend an afternoon tracking down a missing cup. Because that's not a vampire counting thing, that's an Alucard cleanliness thing.]

[willpowerful]

In fairness, we try to make sure most people are. We go where we are needed, as needed.

[She glances around, taking it all in, before returning to Alucard's side and motioning toward the front of his shirt with an idle wave of one hand.]

You were walking better today. How is it feeling?

[miraclewhip]

No. Out. You don't have to be with us, but you can't sleep in here.

[ He sighs. He doesn't want to deal with him as Adrian in here. But perhaps he has to. Just for a moment. Just for one very tired, very sincere word. ]

Please.